Little Mod V4

[Amonchakad]

Since, currently, stun grenades are an extremely effective way of dealing with any early-mid game enemy (and maybe late game too, haven't gotten there yet), while they're supposed to be an unreliable way to get an alien down alive when you need to capture it, can you try and get them into that state in the mod?

They will most likely get reworked very soon, with all the other grenades, but it would still fix them for the time being. And yes, I know that I could just *not* use them, but since they don't just provide an easy kill but score you more points with the nation, it mildly annoys me.

Also, is there any way you could actually show stun damage in the soldier stats? Since, you know, these best-of-the-best soldiers apparently LOVE to just throw a grenade at their feet for no apparent reason

(I have, however, noted that they always go down after 2 "exposures" to stun gas, so maybe there's no stun damage but a simple stun counter: when it reaches 2, you're out.)

[Sathra]

There's a few things I could do. Reduce the blast range, so they don't cover as large an area with stun gas or reduce how much stun they do (grenade and/or gas). Or I can do all 3. Soliciting opinions.

And by two exposures, do you mean two stun grenades at the feet? Because unless the soldier has over 80 health it'll be stunned just from 2 grenades as only 1 Xenonaut armour has 'chemical' resistance (I forgot to add to another, thanks for making me check, updated 4.1.2 now - savegame compatible). The Xenopedia for Nerve Gas isn't joking, its even more lethal to your own troops than the aliens.

Can't change UI stuff, since I don't know how. Hopefully in later builds of the game. For now, don't throw unless its a clear path and/or there is only 1 cover prop in front of the soldier.

[Amonchakad]

With "exposure", I meant a dose of of the gas, since I thought that the grenade merely spawned the gas, which was actually doing the real damage. But, after a quick peek at the .xml files, I see that the grenade does indeed do stun damage by itself, while the gas' damage is applied when an entity enters, or begins a turn in, a gas-covered tile (supposedly, the gas damage isn't applied in the initial throw aswell?).

Anyway, what this means, is that any alien hit by a stun grenade will inevitably suffer not only the grenade's damage, but the gas' damage when the alien turn begins. The same, of course, also applies to xenonauts. A possible way to balance this would be to simply lower gas damage by a significant amount, so that you can't stun a tough alien by simply tossing one grenade at it and watch as he takes 3-4 times the grenade's damage while attempting to walk out, but instead it takes a large amount of resources in terms of TUs and grenades thrown.

Also, lowering its radius wouldn't hurt.

I also wanted to raise the point that smoke grenades might be a tad too powerful, since every tile of smoke in the line of fire lowers accuracy by a large amount, thus making it quite easy to create intangible "walls" behind which your soldiers can take cover.

However, I think that the real problem with grenades is just that you can take with you so MANY. At 1 kg and 1 slot, you can easily afford to just pack 10+ on every soldier, especially with strength rising so quickly. Perhaps you might make them heavier or take 2 slots?

[Naresh]

You have to think about how to engage with the sniper rifles. Cover is really good (as it should be, or you'll get slaughtered), so there's two places sniper rifles are good. Extreme long range shots to smack an alien that's out of cover, or simply blow up the cover, then kill it. Rockets ahoy! (also most mid-game aliens can survive a frag rocket to the face). Its also extremely good at suppression, so you can use it for that. And lastly, the shown hit chance is wrong alot, or chances under 10% hit absurdly often (1 in 4/5).

Starting with a bunch of aliens nearby is hard, but you can use smoke, careful target selection (closest targets, and targets with heavy plasmas first), and simply using the chinook to break line of sight. Also, if you can't kill it, suppress it (rockets, sniper rifles and hits with rifles work well). They can't shoot as much if they are suppressed, which can save lives. Stuff saving the civilians, your troops are worth more and completing the mission is a huge score boost (might make civvies worth more dead next version, might not).

Hunter survival: Simple answer? It has armour now. Pretty good armour, though it get worn down by multiple shots (I think a shot has to damage to degrade armour). Armour is directional, so if you're tanking plasma pistol shots from the front it can survive quite well. Take a couple plasma rifle shots from behind and you're gonna bring wreckage home. A heavy plasma rifle can wreck it pretty easily (at least it should).

I feel I'm quite good at using snipers, but I've found they're really extreme, either insanely good, or terrible.

As for the being ganked by aliens on landing, I forgot smoke grenades and all of them were well outside sight range

Grenade wise: I feel standard grenades aren't powerful enough (they cost a lot of TUs to throw, for only 4 tiles impact), could grenades be made more like X com apocalypse ones (larger blast, less damage away from the epicentre)?

Stun grenades could do with losing a tile of range I feel.

- I've been playing X com since it pretty much came out. Glad xenonauts is finally stepping up to the plate, very happy this mod is around.

[Amonchakad]

Oh yes, I forgot frags: unlike the other grenades, they might well use a buff, right now it feels like I'm throwing firecrackers

[PerfectDeath]

If you want old xcom grenades use breach charges. =]

[Sathra]

All very good points, thankyou.

Next version I'm going to set grenades to have a slightly higher blast radius and do incendiary damage (so they do more against props, but worse against certain aliens).

I guess I could increase the weight of grenades to 2 as well, and possibly make stun grenades/rockets manufacturable. Making them bigger would probably make them look very strange. I could drop the burst damage of stun grenades, but keep the gas damage as the same level. So you have to throw more for an instant stun. I'll also drop the cost to use a stun baton to make them more useable.

Smoke grenades aren't actually as good as they seem to due to a bug with accuracy (basically, low chance shots hit far too often).

[Naresh]

A few personal requests: Reduce the cost of throwing grenades, they're too expensive for what they are currently...

I don't think weight is an issue for grenades, once you wear any sort of armour and use an advanced gun you won't have room for many grenades...

[Sathra]

I was going to buff grenades. Bigger explosion, more damage to props. Might change the explosion animation for alenium grenades too, so they look more awesome.

Oh and yes, sniper rifles used to have an ability to penetrate cover, but it had some bugs with it. So when that gets sorted out they'll be better. I'll increase accuracy a bit though.

[Sathra]

Alright, new iteration. https://www.dropbox.com/s/z2uiy98rk3ghrik/Sathra%27s%20Mod%20V4.1.3.zip

Changes made are as follows:

-Bigger rocket explosions. More expressive smoke and fire. CRY HAVOC!

-Grenades now do incendiary damage, and have a bigger damage radius. Mere frags will destroy wooden boxes.

-Alenium grenades use a different explosion animation, because I just like it this way. Same with fusion.

-New smoke for rockets. Again, mostly for looks.

-Stun grenades nerfed. Smaller radius and less damage. Tell me if this is enough, and if it isn't I'll make them manufacturable.

-Slight nerf (10 points of damage) to nerve gas grenades.

And I re-enabled hypervelocity for sniper rifles. They can punch through cover though there is a bug. It seems to ignore cover when calculating shown hit chance so its not perfect.

[Sathra]

Now for a picture from my testing! This is CentMerica team on their third mission. So mostly Corporals with a few Sergeants.

Every one of those 'craters' is from a single frag rocket. They still can't kill the sebillians I was fighting with a direct hit (if it actually ever happened, lousy rookies).

And the heavies are using ballistic machinguns as their stats aren't really up to using Scatter lasers yet. Soon though.

And back to mod discussion, how do people feel about grenade and rocket manufacture time and cost? Good how it is, or could it be increased (money cost, not resources)?

[Naresh]

Will try out the mod later today, out of interest, how did you get laser weapons before your third mission (Are you including crash sites)?

[Sathra]

Third mission for that team, from a second base in Central America. My main team (middle east base) has something like 30+ missions.

Shortly after that I got my first landing ship, and CentMerica got to whet their teeth on it. Four deaths, as I was not expecting Harridans lol.

Next mission after that is another landing ship for them, and a base for the veterans.

I think I may have nerfed stun grenades too much, so updating it again. They will now fill their blast radius with stun smoke (I just had one create a mere 3 tiles of gas).

[Grazgul]

Is there any chance of boosting the flashbangs?

they are so underpowered currently. It's a shame too!

[Sathra]

They're much better than in vanilla already. I guess I could boost them more, though they have a bug with them so if you're throwing them further than 15 tiles or so they will be much weaker.

[Sathra]

Oh dear god the base was hard. Only lost 1 soldier but I went through nearly 15 laser cells for 10 people, 6 alenium rockets, 8 grenades (alenium and nerve gas) and was grabbing heavy plasmas off of the dead aliens.

It takes so much laser fire to kill a wraith or andron warrior/elite. Unloading three bursts of carbine fire merely injures an elite. Took a grenade and 2 bursts to kill a Wraith warrior I pinned and gunned down at point-blank range.

It was fun as hell. I heartily recommend it!

[PerfectDeath]

Wooo! I'll give this a shot, I have noticed grenades can be pretty hit or 'miss'

by miss I mean by a mile!

I've tested throwing grenades at different things and have found some situations where the grenades are likely to be tossed at around a 30-45 degree angle!

This is pretty consistent when throwing at a target behind cover or with a low chance. Like the 'miss roll' decides to throw a curve ball to keep the grenade away from its target.

Kind of the same with bullets, they will fire wide if accuracy is very low. I can see why though since scatter grouping makes inaccurate shots more accurate due to shot grouping.. =P

[Tiesemans]

Downloaded the lastest version of your mod !

Thanks man.

Just to be sure .. It's adviceable to let steam restore the original Xenonauts files and then only then overwrite the original files with your mod ?!

[Sathra]

If you're using an earlier version of the mod, you can just overwrite without restoring.

[Tiesemans]

Well the thing is .. I just updated my steam version to the beta X19 version.

I tried to load your mod via the mod install menu in the main startup screen but it doesn't seem to work ?!

I mean your mod doesn't seem to get loaded into the game (I also added the starting funds in the gameconfig file you provide) ?!

[Sathra]

I have no idea if the mod install tool even works anymore (I think it doesn't). I'll make a new version for the experimental builds (V5X) as it changes some things that the mod was trying to fix (grenade power dropoff for example).